New deans at Universiti
Malaya( (L-R) Dr Surinderpal Kaur, Dr. Jatswan Singh and Dr. Kiran Kaur.
Malaysia’s top
university promoted three Sikhs, including one as a dean, that will see them
joining the institution’s Senate.
Universiti Malaya (UM)
appointed Dr Surinderpal Kaur as the Faculty of Languages & Linguistics
dean, making her probably the second Sikh to hold a deanship at the Kuala
Lumpur-based university.At the same time, UM
also appointed Dr Jatswan Singh as the executive director of the
Asia-Europe Institute (AEI) and Dr Kiran Kaur as the director of
the Quality Management & Enhancement Centre (QMEC).
All three, who are
associate professors, will hold their position until 2022.
“They must be very good
in their respective areas to land these positions at the nation’s oldest
university. They have definitely earned their positions because of their
expertise,” Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) emeritus professor Dr Chatar Singh
told Asia Samachar.
“It’s was a pleasant
surprise to see the elevation of three Sikhs at a go. It speaks well of their
years of dedication and work at the university,” said another senior academic.
Dr Surinderpal Kaur, who
has been the faculty’s deputy dean since January 2018, is an expert in areas
like humanities, linguistics and literature as well as democracy and governance
(political discourse, electoral dynamics, protests, dissent, demonstrations,
terrorism and insurgency).She co-authored Gender
and the Changing Face of Higher Education in Asia Pacific which was released
last year.
Dr Surinderpal, a PhD
holder from UK’s Lancaster University, has also been active on the Sikh
community front. In 2016, she took an active part when Kultar’s Mime, a theatre play from US, came
Malaysia.She also spearheaded
two plays – ‘Marjana to Mittar: Bhai Mardana’s Story’ in 2017 and ‘Tribute to
the Tenth’ in 2018.
Dr Jatswan Singh, who holds a
PhD from Leeds University, is an expert in areas like conflict resolution,
foreign policy and comparative politics for contemporary Southeast Asia. He is
the author of Historical Dictionary of Brunei Darussalam and is an expert on
Myanmar.
Dr Kiran
Kaur is from the Department of Library & Information Science, Faculty of
Computer Science & Information Technology.The holder of a PhD
from UM, she began as a public school teacher where she taught for eight
years, and then as a UM librarian for four years. She then joined the faculty
as an academic staff in mid-2003.Herresearch
interests include information services, service quality, quality management, academic librarianship, social networking, community information services,
social capital and scientometrics.
QMEC is responsible for
accreditation and quality assurance of all levels of academic programmes in UM.
Dr.Gurdeep Kaur
Associate Professor
Sri Guru Nanak Dev Khalsa College
University of Delhi
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